


born to be the woman we could blame

by plathitudes



Category: Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
Genre: Child Abuse, Firsts and Lasts, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plathitudes/pseuds/plathitudes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luthvian's life, in firsts and lasts. "The first time her father beats her is when she decides to see if she can fly."</p>
            </blockquote>





	born to be the woman we could blame

The first time her father beats her is when she decides to see if she can fly. She is seven years old.

Her older cousins turn and dive, dark shapes against the gray-gold of the evening sky. The last fingers of sunlight illuminate their wings from behind, and Luthvian watches with her pulse beating through her body, so strong she can feel it in her fingers. The longing in her throat is bitter and dark; she wants, more than anything, to be aloft with them. She would be a better flier than any. She wants the thrill of plummeting and the deep pain in their shoulders that they always complain of after a long flight; she wants to not feel incomplete, like a perversion of what should have been an Eyrien Black Widow, winged and powerful.

So, as night finally darkens the sky and her cousins become nothing more than blurs that blot out the stars, she climbs a tree and picks the thickest branch. She angles so she can stand fully, stretches her arms out all the way, feeling the tightness in the muscles across her shoulders. The sensation encourages her; she straightens her back and fills her lungs with air, and slowly, channelling all the grace she’d seen darting above her, falls forward.

Later, she will mock herself for the act. Had she expected wings to suddenly manifest out of nowhere? Luthvian doesn’t know what her seven-year-old-self thought would happen, but she remembers clearly the shock of her child-thin leg breaking, the pain that wiped out thought until she finally inhaled the scent of pine needles and screamed. She remembers how that pain had diminished in the face of her father’s wrath, his fists.

Her aunt had healed her leg and left the bruises; they were black and blue and green against the gold of her skin. She felt them ache when she inhaled and thought, This is what being Eyrien is. This is the first time Luthvian hated.

* * *

 

The last time Luthvian sees her father is the night after her Virgin Night. She had returned home and found her eldest cousin, Kievar, arms crossed and eyes dark with the disgust she’s become used to. Luthvian feels all of the languor, the peace she’s felt since the night before drain away at the sight of him. He tells her, curtly, that her father had decided that if she was old enough to let herself be fucked by some Hayllian bastard, she’s old enough to live on her own.

Luthvian never goes back to that house. The last time she ever sees any of her cousins again is when Kievar’s brother had gotten injured and was taken to her, as an Eyrien healer. His wings had been sprayed with some type of acidic poison; it ate away at feathers, skin, bone, muscle, sinew, all at the same rate. She shields her hands and straightens out his wings to allow the poison greater access, and watches as her dear cousin screams until he has no voice left. She tells him, later, that there was no stopping the poison. He refuses to look at her, or speak; later, she hears that he has killed himself. He plunged from a cliff. Only an Eyrien male would be so idiotic, she thinks.

* * *

The first time Luthvian felt love for anything living was when she sees the slight convex form of her stomach, unfamiliarly tight against her dress. She had known a child was coming, even before her moontime passed with no blood; as a Healer, her senses are attuned to any change in her body. But knowing the concept of a child, abstract and huge and coming with shackles of responsibility, is different from seeing the new curve of her body, feeling the potential in the new weight. Her breasts have yet to grow heavier, but she knows it will happen soon. She has seen many pregnant women throughout her time as a Healer, many of them bleeding to death on her table, with sweaty foreheads and eyes rolling like those of horses. She thinks of her body, always so spare and trim, growing rounded with child, and feels a pang of want that was completely foreign to her.

She will have this child, and she would be powerful, and wingless like her mother, and grow under the protection of her father, and remain Luthvian’s, always.

Saetan will exert the mantle of his name over her, and nothing else. Luthvian will not allow it. A man will not be allowed to steal away yet another, precious thing away from her.

* * *

The first time Luthvian is truly, bone-deeply jealous of another woman is when she sees Jaenelle Angelline with her (adopted, Luthvian thinks spitefully) father. They are walking together, away from her cottage, down the road to the Coach. Saetan’s arm is comfortably draped across the girl’s slender shoulders, silver-streaked head bending down to that blonde one to hear her words more clearly. Luthvian remembers, suddenly and with blinding clarity, of the way Saetan had acted around her after he knew she was bearing his child. His arms had come across her, in that exact way; his head had bent down at that same angle, as well, but not to hear what she was saying. Instead, Saetan’s gaze had always been focused on the growing child in her stomach, as her wishes and requests passed unheeded, by anyone.

And it is the same, she thinks as she turns away, with Jaenelle. The girl is merely a receptacle of power to Saetan, as Luthvian had merely been a body where his precious child had developed. Once the child was born, she had been cast aside, like a box within which a gift lay wrapped, once full of potential, now discarded. And when, in the future, Jaenelle comes to her, betrayed by her father as she will inevitably be, Luthvian will be here to offer her kindness, she decides with a spurt of generosity. It is not the girl’s fault that she is young, and easily taken-in, as Luthvian had once been.

 

* * *

The first time Luthvian sees Lucivar, she’s only just returning to coherence after a long while of pain. What she first sees when she opens her eyes is Saetan, holding a bundle of crying baby. She snarls at Saetan, or perhaps yells, and then he is being placed in her arms, and she stares down at him. He’s red-faced and bawling. The sounds of his cries are exactly what her ears do not want to hear at the moment.

“Lucivar,” she rasps, and Saetan intakes a breath, because she hasn’t told him what she intends to call their - her child before. She touches the blotchy skin of his face, wrinkled with fury. After a moment, he grows tired of screaming and falls asleep. She holds him a bit closer, and when Saetan moves to see his face, she finds that she doesn’t mind.

He is not a girl, which she regrets, and he has wings that she can feel, pressed up against his back, though the thin fabric of the blanket he’s swaddled in. She can deal with that. She thinks, at that moment, that she can deal with anything life flings at her, if she can just be with him, and teach him, and be loved by him unconditionally, as she’s never been loved by anyone. She doesn’t adore him yet, but she feels sure that she will, soon.

(She is right about that, but wrong about everything else.)

The last time she sees Lucivar, she is going back into her cottage after huffily showing him out, but she turns around suddenly, to see Lucivar take off. She usually avoids the sight, but for once she watches as his wings beat once, twice, then lift him off the ground, sending dust spinning and almost blinding her. He flies off into the dusk, becoming smaller and smaller, until he is nothing but a dark shape against the gray-gold evening sky. Luthvian watches, her pulse beating through her body, and she won’t recognize the emotion welling up inside her until she is tasting death and desperate to tell her son that she loves him. She creates a bubble of power and puts into it, happiness.

**Author's Note:**

> Title song: Jezebel, by Iron & Wine.
> 
> Luthvian is actually one of the only characters I truly LIKE from this series. Or, at least, one of the few I find interesting. In any case, I hope you enjoyed my take on her.


End file.
